Robert's Story
by TheGirlOfThorns
Summary: Robert's thoughts during the Accords Hall scene. The story of Waywood. Sad story. Oneshot. Please give it a try! STRONG LANGUAGE, INCLUDING SLURS. I do not agree with the views expressed by Robert, just an FYI.


I watched.

Stele to skin, hands to face, lips to lips.

I watched it all.

Everybody turned to stare at the spectacle before them, the war momentarily forgotten as the two men in front of us all locked lips. One put his arms around the other's hips, moving closer, lusting more. Lust lust lust love lust love lust lust.

I hear my wife gasp next to me, putting her hand to her mouth.

Eventually, everyone, even Maryse, shrugged away, putting it behind them, not really caring, not really understanding what had just happened enough. But not me. I watched it all, all the sin.

_Oh God no Raziel no not you. Not you. Not you…_

I flash back to when I was a teenager, fifteen years old. I always had liked to read books, books about adventure sometimes but usually books to get away from adventure. I read almanacs and research journals and anything that I thought I could learn from; I always liked to consider myself open-minded, picking up new ideas here and there in an ever-changing world that I needed to be cognizant of. It seemed like a normal Wednesday, I had my feet kicked up in the Academy library and had picked out a book. The title was inconsequential. I was always an outcast, had no friends, no real close ties with anyone. I liked it that way. Being friendly with other people just seemed like way too much work. That is why I was so unnerved when a pair of rugged hands snatched the book out of my hands and said from behind me, in an overly animated voice. "Dude. Just what the _fuck _are you reading."

I turned to glare at him. He had a boyish face, no stubble yet at all, and was wearing a plain black choker with a single charm of a cross. Long, unkempt brown hair was hidden by a beanie, and his mouth twitched as he said, "Tsk, tsk, tsk. The History of the Summoning of Lilith? The teach is gonna think you're… ya know." The boy made a crazy loop around his head. I just wished he'd go away. I was really hoping that he got the meaning of my glare, but of course he didn't, I would later thing after I got to know him. He was such a _boy. _A man's man, if you will. He smiled, running a hand through the length of his hair, looking surprised when it got stuck on his stupid orange hat- I remember thinking he was an idiot, all logic _says_ it would hit his beanie- and he just let out this little chuckle. "I'm Michael," he said, and I rolled my eyes.

"Robert," I told him. "Give me back my book."

"Do you even _have _any friends? I always see you sitting here…"

"I don't want friends."

"Liar."

"Seriously? What is wrong with you? Go away."

"I'll be your friend." I looked at Michael with cold blue eyes. Michael's hazel ones looked back at me, hopeful. He looked like a wide-eyed puppy, hopeful, waiting. I couldn't just say no to him.

"Why do you want to be friends with someone like me?"

"You seem cool, man. Seriously."

No one had ever called me cool before. "Look, if you hand back my book and let me read it now, I promise that later, I'll go to Taki's with you, have some of their fries. But for now, it's reading time, okay?"

"Taki's tonight?"

"Sure, whatever." Better to just get it over with anyway.

"Rad, man," he said. He wouldn't shut up, it seemed, but at least he handed me back my book. "They have killer fries."

A year and a half later, we were parabatai, closer than brothers. Everyone knew that to mess with Michael was to mess with me, and vice versa. I remember one particular night after a hunt, the two of us hopped on his motorcycle- of _course _a kid like that would get a motorcycle- and rode around town. "Bro," he said, "Doesn't it feel like the wind is carrying us somewhere greater? Somewhere… I dunno." He gave up on his sentences a lot like that. It was funny most of the time. I smiled.

"Yeah," I said. "It does."

"See," Michael said, taking his hands off the handles of the motorcycle to adjust his beanie. It always freaked me out when he did that. "Don't you like having a friend?" I sulked. I never liked admitting it to Michael, but he knew I loved him like my own brother. As any good parabatai should.

"Yeah," I conceded. "Where are you taking us?"

"Taki's," he said. I smiled a little. Taki's was kind of our thing. Ever since the first night, we went there after the Academy almost every other day, and then after hunts when we actually started killing demons.

"Onward, then, peasent," I joked. I had never been one for jokes, but Michael brought that out in me. We rode on as the cross over my heart thumped against my chest.

That "somewhere greater" ended up being into Valentine's circle. I wasn't so sure that we should be going along with them- it was really just too many people for me to collaborate with- but with a "dude, come on, it'll be fun," from Michael and one glance at Maryse Trueblood, I changed my mind.

"Fine," I gave in. "I'll tell Valentine we're both in later."

"Rad."

Then, I asked him, hoping for Raziel knows what, "Maryse Trueblood. She's a fine one, isn't she?"

Michael said nothing. I didn't find out why until I was twenty, the night that I was going to ask Maryse, originally, to marry me. The ring was in my pocket. I was meeting up with Michael first to tell him what I was about to do. He would guide me through it- hell, maybe he'd even tell me what to say. I was so nervous that my hands shook as I walked toward Michael, sitting on a bench, putting his Game Boy into his pocket as I walked up to him. "Yo," he said to me.

"Hey," I smiled. "So, I have something important to tell you."

"Wait," Michael said. "So do I."

Well, fine. My news was probably bigger. "You go first then, Michael."

"I have to." Michael gulped. Looking back on it, he was probably blushing. At the time, I couldn't tell through my veil of anticipation. I was asking a girl to marry me. I was going to be married. "I'll chicken out otherwise…" Michael's voice brought me back to Earth.

"Angel, Michael," I said, "just tell me."

"I love you."

"And?"

"Robert, I _love_ you."

"Yeah, yeah. Parabatai vow. 'I'll love you as my own soul,' all that. What're you getting to?"

"NO, ROBERT." He was exploding at me. I was confused. "I mean. I mean I'm in love with you."

My heart beat in my chest so hard that I think that I could feel the _thump, thump, thump _of the cross against my chest. I must have misheard, I remember thinking. "What was that?"

"Robert. You heard me." Michael paused. "I mean I am beautifully, fantastically, and catastrophically in love with you. Dude," he added, for good measure.

I don't even remember thinking. I just remember the sound of my own heartbeat, loud in my chest, the loss of control as my hands shook, the disconnect I felt from myself as my hand connected with his face, my "best friend" dropping to the ground with a cry-

"Robert, man. _What are you doing? What are you doing? Robert, this isn't like you-"_

"Get the _fuck _away from me-"

"Bro-"

"You _freak." _I pointed at him as he got up from the ground and readjusted that hat in that once-funny way of his. "You _faggot._ You're gonna rot in _hell-" _

"ROBERT!" I think he was crying. I was too engraged to tell or even, really, to make note.

"You _never _talk to me again, you hear? _Never. _I never want to see your _ridiculous _face again. Stay. Away. From. Me."

"Robert, please, let's talk-"

"Shut up."

"Please, I was just trying to be honest. It's okay if you don't feel-"

"Damn STRAIGHT it's okay that I don't feel the same way. It's _right_ that I don't-"

"Maybe for you."

"I am leaving. If you ever bother me again, I will tell the Clave. You hear me?" I started to scream. "I WILL TELL THE CLAVE AND THEY WILL STRIP YOU OF YOUR MARKS IF YOU EVER TRY TO TOUCH ME WITH A TEN FOOT POLE AGAIN- YOU-"

"ROBERT."

I walked away from Michael that night. He called after me in a broken voice the entire time I walked away, but I instead chose to concentrate on my throbbing fist. I never had a real conversation with him again. Once, Maryse asked me what of our parabatai bond- I knew he had her ask me, but I didn't have the energy to do anything about it- and I just shrugged. Michael was the one, I realized, who had always given me the energy- I was bland, I was just old Robert, I didn't know how to get by anymore without him. He had been my best friend. I missed him as he had once been, but reminding myself what he had become leveled me again. Still.

It hurt like hell when Jace came to the Institute saying that he was Michael Wayland's son, his father was dead, and I was his named his Godfather. I moved him in and cried all night. I never cry.

About two weeks after Maryse asked me that, she told me she was pregnant. Nine months later I held a beautiful baby boy in my hands. You. I was so proud of you. I loved you so much. I promised myself that I would raise you to be a better man than me, to make up for the way I had treated him. But now. Now.

I watched.

I could do nothing else.

My hand moved to the cross choker around my chest, not the same cross I had worn most of my life but rather the one that I had found in the mud by the bench when I went back the day after beating Michael. His choker. I always wore it.

One week later, you told me you were going to Taki's with Magnus. I couldn't stop you.

Please. Please, Raziel, not you. Not my son.

**Hey guys! Just to let you all know I do not agree with the views expressed in this story. I really dislike Robert and have no idea why, but i wanted to write his story. I dunno. Poor Michael... anyway, please review! I want to know how I did.**


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